Product Description

The final harvest of our great nature writer's last years, Wild Fruits presents Thoreau's distinctly American gospel--a sacramental vision of nature in which "the tension between Thoreau the naturalist and Thoreau the missionary for nature's wonders invigorates nearly every page" (Time). In transcribing the 150-year-old manuscript's cryptic handwriting and complex notations, Thoreau specialist Bradley Dean has performed a "heroic feat of decipherment" (Booklist) to bring this great work to light. Readers will discover "passages that reach for the transcendentalist ideal of writing new scriptures, yet grounding this Bible in a vision of practical ecology" (Boston). Beautifully illustrated throughout with line drawings of the natural life Thoreau considers on his walks, Wild Fruits is "well worth any nature lover's attention" (Christian Science Monitor).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1324641 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-06
• Released on: 2001-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Amazon.com
Henry David Thoreau was 44 years old when he died of tuberculosis in the early spring of 1862. He had acquired a measure of notoriety in his lifetime largely for his fervent support of abolitionism and his refusal to pay taxes to support the American war of conquest against Mexico, the subject of his widely circulated pamphlet Civil Disobedience. Closer to his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, he was known as something of an eccentric who kept a home in the woods and took long walks when the citizens of the town were at work or church.

We scarcely know Thoreau better, writes archivist and scholar Bradley Dean: we still remember him today for having spent time in jail and spinning philosophy out of the New England woods. On the strength of this lost, and now published, final manuscript of Thoreau's, Dean would have us think of him as a protoecologist, and for very good reason. In the last years of his life, Thoreau resolved to learn better the science behind nature, and in Wild Fruits he collected the lore and facts surrounding the plants around his home, observing such things as the quantity of chestnuts that local trees were producing, the myriad shapes of pine cones as they unfold, the taste of "fever bush," and the smell of sweet gale.

The unfinished manuscript, cataloging dozens of species, affords a fascinating glimpse into Thoreau's method as an amateur student of nature--a method worthy of close study and imitation. Dean adds greatly to it with his intelligent commentary, which revisits Thoreau's sources, corrects a few of his errors, and emphasizes the writer's importance to natural history and belles-lettres alike. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly
Thoreau's Walden (1854) is regarded both as a masterpiece of American prose and as a forerunner of modern environmentalism. Its author spent much of the 1850s learning what botany could teach him about the New England woods he chronicled. Thoreau brought that knowledge to bear on this sometimes very beautiful essay about plants, fruits and nuts, left incomplete at his death in 1862 and here printed for the first time. Thoreau's brief preface echoes the passions of Walden: "What are all the oranges imported into England to the hips and haws in her hedges?" The rest of the work is arranged fruit by fruit: we begin with elm-fruit ("most mistake the fruit before it falls for leaves, and we owe to it the first deepening of the shadows in our streets"), and proceed through several dozen entries to sassafras, skunk cabbage, strawberries, cranberries, juniper berries and, finally, "winter fruits." Though many plants' entries comprise just a few sentences, some offer plenty of room to meditate. Huckleberries prompt a 20-page essay, and pitch pine leads Thoreau to explain how "the restless pine seeds go dashing over [snow] like an Esquimaux sledge with an invisible team until, losing their wings or meeting with some insuperable obstacle, they lie down once for all, perchance to rise up pines." Though the book as a whole reads like the rough draft it is, plenty of individual essays and sentences retain Thoreau's famous confidence and attention. Editor and Thoreau scholar Dean (Faith in a Seed) appends copious notes, along with passages from Thoreau's still unpublished, unfinished The Dispersion of Seeds. Illustrations by Abigail Rorer. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
When he died in 1862, Thoreau left the fragmentary manuscript of Wild Fruits, itself to be part of a projected natural history of Concord. Dean, director of the Media Center at the Thoreau Institute, has edited Thoreau's manuscript, publishing it for the first time. Thoreau proposes to shift his focus from himself and the examination of his own deliberate life in nature to the careful observation of nature itself. Toward this end, he offers a series of paragraphs or brief essays describing the condition of each of the wild fruits he finds around Concord and supplementing these accounts with notes on the relevant lore. Thoreau writes with the same incisive style and dry wit characteristic of Walden. If this books lacks Walden's scope, it continues its spirit. Dean includes textual notes, a glossary, and a chronology as well as a succinct but substantive introduction. In bringing forth Wild Fruits, he has performed an immense service. Recommended for public and academic libraries.AThomas L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, GA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

It's really about fruit!!
This may sound silly, but I was surprised to find out that this book is actually about WILD FRUITS. I mean everything you ever wanted to know about every kind of fruit the New England landscape has to offer: when it blooms, where it can be found, texture, color, everything. If you're looking for another Walden or a deeper understanding of the Transcendentalist movement, start elsewhere and come back to this one. As always with Thoreau this book is marvellously written, and the philosophy is there. It's just scattered and half-hidden throughout the landscape like wild strawberries (and just as delicious). It's a great read, just be warned: it's first and foremost about fruit!

Thoreau shows his true genius!
As anyone should know, from reading my previous reviews (regarding the works of a certain American writer, novelist, botanist and downright genius, i.e., Henry David Thoreaus) is that I do consider him to be one the greatest writers ever to have come/lived in the US. His wide array of knowledge is astounding, e.g., botany, history, linguistics et al; so that everyhting that he states, writes and says in his book is with the voice of authority. For anyone whom is even remotely interested in botany, ecology or enviromentalism; then this book is a must have. Since Thoreau can be and should be seen as the first true enviromentalist in the US. However, for the scholar, this book in question ,i.e.,Wild Fruits : Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript by Henry David Thoreau, et al, is a must have and I would defenitely recommend it.

Last sweet words from our friend Henry
I received Wild Fruits from my parents for Christmas, read it last spring, and finally have gotten around to writing a small, informal review. First of all, I'd like to thank Dr. Dean for bringing this last Thoreau manuscript to light-- he has done a great service to Thoreau enthusiasts, lovers of literature and nature, and posterity with this work (I'd tell him personally but I seem to have misplaced his e-mail address).

There isn't a great deal I feel need to add, as previous reviewers have done a good job already. Over the past year, Thoreau's words on these wild fruits have been steeped in my consciousness. Henry's loving, beautiful depictions of these various gifts of nature were with me as I worked this summer at a garden center, realizing that Henry's "shad bush" and our "serviceberry" were one and the same. After reading this book, I was much more aware of the fruits of my own native Michigan fields and woods-- blackberries, rose hips, elderberries, wild grapes, and viburnums were all there this summer, more numerous and beautiful than ever before. I found myself collecting and tasting plants I never would have thought to try before, Henry's words openened a whole new world to me. Then, in August, I made a pilgrimage to Massachusetts, looking for and tasting the fruits of New England, even the fabled huckleberries, on Cape Cod National Seashore and in the Walden Woods, as I sauntered along the railroad tracks into Concord from the pond. Even this fall, when I came back to my university in Colorado, I discovered and gathered the fruits of the prickly pear cactus, and have saved the seeds, hoping to possibly propagate them.

Read these last sweet words from our friend Henry-- let him teach you to love the simple natural joy that can be found nestled among the shrub-oaks and pitch pines: our free, wild American fruits.